I'll try Museek. Truthfully though, it won't be the only alternate music player I've used (by a long shot). I just can't find a music player that I particularly like on the Android. The sorting options just aren't as intuitive. It also uses that dreadful "media scanner" setup (which seems to be ubiquitous across all players) that detects every single audio file on your SD card as a "song" and imports it into your library - including custom sounds you use for ringtones and/or alerts. You can get around that by putting a file names.nomedia in the directory with files you don't want to show up, but if you do that in your ringtone directory then they don't show up as ringtones either. Catch 22 there. There may be some even fancier way of solving the problem, but I wasn't able to find it in a few hours of searching, and the mere fact that it would take a few hours of searching is a downside in and of itself.
That said, it's not THAT big of a deal, as I listen to more podcasts than I do music, and as mentioned in my previous post, I've found a very good podcast client already.
Don't get me wrong, I love my Android phone and will be sticking to that platform - I just don't like the way the music situation is on it.
The music interface on the iPod Touch IS the music interface on the iPhone. The iPod Touch came afterwards. Your point is moot as for the most part the iPod Touch is simply an iPhone with the phone part removed. Given that we are talking apps, not phone calls, then the phone portion is irrelevant and it's perfectly reasonable to compare the iPod Touch and the Android.
I don't think such a tool would be worth the effort, particularly when even good versions of such translation tools almost always need to be heavily audited to ensure functionality, and most of the time the automated code is far less efficient than the original. I suppose you could take a "it's better than nothing" view of the situation, but realistically I don't think that flooding the Android market with a bunch of poor quality translated apps is going to be their goal when tackling the problem of low quality apps.
That said, I've never noticed a problem with it personally. As an Android and iPod Touch user I've never found a gap in what I could do on one vs the other.
The ONLY thing that I find better on the iPod isn't really an app on that side: the music player. The default music player on my Android phone is clunky and hard to use. It works much, much better on the iPod. On the other hand, the podcast functionality of that built in music player pales in comparison to what I can do with DoggCatcher on my Android phone.
It's not like the Apple police are coming to your door and forcing you to buy Apple... if you don't like what they offer, don't buy it. I don't see why that's such a problem.
When you're talking business, it is. What this guy is saying is that essentially, sure, customers have the choice to buy or not, and on his analysis, based on the company's behavior, a significant (and growing) chunk of people may be choosing the "don't buy it" option as time marches on. While you might not care about that, there are lots and lots of Apple shareholders that most certainly DO care about that.
I'm sure it'll have some positive impact, but how much is still up for debate. Personally, I see more more opportunity for people who were stuck on the iPhone to now switch carriers from AT&T to Verizon (no change in iPhone user base), than people already on Verizon to be switching from an existing Android or Blackberry device to an iPhone.
I'll admit, as a former iPod Touch user that pretty much HAS to use Verizon (no other carrier has a signal where my house is), Apple once had a chance to get me on board. At this point though, I've already went with the Android alternative, and I've acclimated to it now. Just for kicks the other day I picked up my iPod Touch again and I was flat out amazed and just how much I disliked using it now. Everything on my Fascinate feels better. The apps, the features - Android simply works better for me at this point.
The iPhone's only use to me now is to serve as competition so as to ensure that Android software and hardware development doesn't stagnate.
They didn't say they'd be destroyed - just overtaken. The fanboys were always there. There was a period (early to mid 90's) when that's pretty much the ONLY business Apple had though, and the company quite nearly went under during that time.
I'd seriously question what "science and facts" you're referring to. As a matter of fact, I can say with experience that for anyone with seborraic dermatitus, if you don't wash your skin every day it will break out into a rash.
Sports equipment is a bit different. When you use it, you're often sweaty and smelly anyways, so a little extra stench isn't all that hard to tolerate. When I played football in high school I only washed my practice jersey and pants about once per week too.
Indeed. Also, though it might not be a health hazard per se, the general feeling of dirtiness does effect my well being. I realize that its' probably psychological/stress related, but for example if I wake up on a weekend and don't shower until noon for example (whereas normally I shower before work a few hours earlier than that), I will without fail be starting to develop a bad headache. Just the general bad feeling of being unclean will affect me.
Same with clothes. I'll admit that once or twice - particularly in college - I've been in a rush and just threw on a pair of jeans or socks that I wore the day before (never did exceed 2 wearings though). Without fail, I would be not feeling well by the end of the day. Again, probably stress related, but still.
I don't think Apple thought this cunning plan all the way through.
I'm sure that they have. As asinine as it may seem, I'm sure their warranty contract states that as part of regular service they are to implement any fixes or design changes. If you refuse those then you're not obeying the terms of the contract and therefore they are not required to either.
Good ol' Lycos. That was actually my search engine of choice in the pre-Google days.
I don't remember it being THAT bad, but I think it may be a matter of adjustment. I DO remember that back then my bookmarks file meant a lot more to me. If I found something interesting I bookmarked it because otherwise I might not find it again. Nowadays - I rarely care about my bookmarks. Anything I need to find again I can usually find FASTER by Googling than by searching through a long list of bookmarks.
I guess that does speak some towards how much better search engines have gotten.
Very, very true. I tend to be politically pretty moderate myself, and due to interests I visit a lot of different sites with different political leanings. Even on the sites that are mostly right-wing, people are very unhappy about this. It's not the right way to go about it. It's not going to solve anything, and it causes problems for everyone.
As someone who works in local government, that's definitely spot on. When we have council meetings, we MIGHT have a few uniformed officers there if they have some interest in the meeting - the sheriff will likely be there too (he may or may not be armed), and the local building security, but they're not armed.
Interestingly enough though, as the shooting occurred on government property, concealed weapons permit holders were not legally allowed to bring their guns onto the property. More examples of how useless gun laws are. The people you have to worry about don't obey them anyways, and they only serve to hamper the law abiding citizens that you don't have to worry bout - and may have even been able to do something to stop this.
Simple reality is that local government meetings are fairly open events that are not that strict on security.
Hopefully she pulls through and we can as a nation rise up stronger from this tragedy.
I've tried the unaccelerated video playback on a myriad of configurations. Different distros - Slackware, Gentoo, Ubuntu, Arch, and others. Different CPU's - a 1.8Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo - a 2.5Ghz AMD Phenom quad core, an AMD Sempron 3400, a Celeron 2.8Ghz, and others. Multiple video cards from both AMD, Intel, and Nvidia as well. Not just swapping components either - I've tried completely different machines (such as my work machine).
Every, single, one, exhibited tearing of the video without GPU acceleration. Not always blatant - it's a subtle effect, and sometimes only visible in high motion scenes, but it was there.
Tried every trick in the book - disabling Compiz, enabling V-sync, different video rendering (OpenGL, X11, Xvideo, etc) - pretty much everything. NOTHING would make the tearing go away except GPU acceleration.
With the amount of testing I did on this specific issue, with multiple setups, I'm convinced that anyone who claims that it's "working fine" without GPU acceleration is simply just not as sensitive to the issue as I am.
All true, but I think the major point of your assertion, and the one that they always miss, is that EVERYONE doesn't have to break their DRM.
I think there is some assumption that if it takes an elaborate setup to break the DRM then it's OK, as not many people will bother, but the reality is once the DRM is broken, someone will release the content on P2P networks WITHOUT DRM. At that point, an easily copyable version is out in the wild. Game over.
That's what I don't get. They throw all this copyprotection on a Blu-ray, DVD, CD, downloadable file, etc, as if a pirates primary source for copying something is finding a friend with it and snagging their copy. In the 80's with VHS tapes that might have been the case, but today? If I want those files I don't even worry about what DRM is on them. I go to The Pirate Bay because, well, someone else has already done the heavy lifting on that stuff.
Yes, but that doesn't have anything to do with learning, that has to do with AMD beating Intel to the market with a useful 64 bit instruction set (Itanic is a joke and will always be nothing more than a footnote) and Intel having no choice but to follow AMD's lead. It's an illustration of what happens when you rest on your laurels.
Depends on your viewpoint. I like AMD, and typically buy AMD, but realistically, it was moreso AMD that was resting on it's laurels. There is nothing really wrong with Itanium. It's a perfectly viable 64-bit instruction set. It's only major fallback was that well, it wasn't x86. Technical problems had little to do with it.
AMD basically shoe-horned 64-bit instructions into the x86 architecture. A far less creative and less impressive feat, but the reality is that market forces decide what succeeds and what doesn't - and the market didn't WANT creative or impressive. They wanted something that they could ease into without breaking backwards compatibility. Notice that just now are people really starting to move to Windows 64-bit in numbers - many years after the chips have been available.
That's a major dissappointment. It's been my experience that in Linux, you simply WILL NOT get smooth video that is free of tearing without employing one of the GPU-assisted rendering methods. Me personally I bought a recent (but still desktop oriented) Nvidia card for my Linux system just for VDPAU support. That was one of the main things that made Linux finally usable to me as a "daily driver".
Eh. Episode 1 was the bad one. Episode 2 wasn't terrible, and I think Episode 3 was actually decent.
Overall, the following tweaks would have done a LOT:
1. Make Anakin start older when first meeting Obi-wan. 14-15 years old. 2. Remove Jar-jar - completely. 3. Remove pod-racing. 4. Remove midichlorians. 5. Find a different actor to play Anakin. 6. Used puppet-Yoda for the first movie. CG Yoda wasn't bad in Eps 2 and 3 but I almost wanted to cry seeing him in Ep 1.
Truth be told after seeing his later stuff, despite the initial fan outcry about the possibility, I would have far preferred that Leonardo DiCaprio have gotten the role of Anakin than Hayden Christianson.
George is more heavily scrutinized on this issue because of past transgressions. There were at least 3 (probably more) VHS versions of the originals, then the laserdisc versions, then the DVD versions (sure there is more than one DVD set out for them), etc, etc, etc.
It's not that releasing on BluRay is a bad thing - it's just that based on past experiences, most people see this as the inevitable FIRST OF MANY BluRay releases of these movies.
Truth be told . . . my only copies of the original trilogy are still on VHS . . .
It's like how at movie theaters or fast food joints they don't always show individual item prices so you don't see that the 'combo' saves you nothing
Either saves you nothing, or at places like Taco Bell costs MORE than my normal order.
I typically always get the small drinks at a fast food place. They all have free refills anyways and I'm not likely to go back more than once for a refill - if that. Taco Bell combos all include their large drinks - which are much bigger than any amount of soda I'd actually want. If you order the combos piecemeal with the large drinks then it's a wash - but if you order separately and get the small drink instead of large, then you actually save a decent amount on the total.
Slashdot Mirror
I'll try Museek. Truthfully though, it won't be the only alternate music player I've used (by a long shot). I just can't find a music player that I particularly like on the Android. The sorting options just aren't as intuitive. It also uses that dreadful "media scanner" setup (which seems to be ubiquitous across all players) that detects every single audio file on your SD card as a "song" and imports it into your library - including custom sounds you use for ringtones and/or alerts. You can get around that by putting a file names .nomedia in the directory with files you don't want to show up, but if you do that in your ringtone directory then they don't show up as ringtones either. Catch 22 there. There may be some even fancier way of solving the problem, but I wasn't able to find it in a few hours of searching, and the mere fact that it would take a few hours of searching is a downside in and of itself.
That said, it's not THAT big of a deal, as I listen to more podcasts than I do music, and as mentioned in my previous post, I've found a very good podcast client already.
Don't get me wrong, I love my Android phone and will be sticking to that platform - I just don't like the way the music situation is on it.
The music interface on the iPod Touch IS the music interface on the iPhone. The iPod Touch came afterwards. Your point is moot as for the most part the iPod Touch is simply an iPhone with the phone part removed. Given that we are talking apps, not phone calls, then the phone portion is irrelevant and it's perfectly reasonable to compare the iPod Touch and the Android.
I don't think such a tool would be worth the effort, particularly when even good versions of such translation tools almost always need to be heavily audited to ensure functionality, and most of the time the automated code is far less efficient than the original. I suppose you could take a "it's better than nothing" view of the situation, but realistically I don't think that flooding the Android market with a bunch of poor quality translated apps is going to be their goal when tackling the problem of low quality apps.
That said, I've never noticed a problem with it personally. As an Android and iPod Touch user I've never found a gap in what I could do on one vs the other.
The ONLY thing that I find better on the iPod isn't really an app on that side: the music player. The default music player on my Android phone is clunky and hard to use. It works much, much better on the iPod. On the other hand, the podcast functionality of that built in music player pales in comparison to what I can do with DoggCatcher on my Android phone.
This guy from netgear talks but he should remember that this is Steve's invention let him do what he wants with it.
I think it's a sad day when we ascribe that decision to the inventor of a device rather than the owner.
It's not like the Apple police are coming to your door and forcing you to buy Apple... if you don't like what they offer, don't buy it. I don't see why that's such a problem.
When you're talking business, it is. What this guy is saying is that essentially, sure, customers have the choice to buy or not, and on his analysis, based on the company's behavior, a significant (and growing) chunk of people may be choosing the "don't buy it" option as time marches on. While you might not care about that, there are lots and lots of Apple shareholders that most certainly DO care about that.
You're ascribing too much logic to the the target demographic. Their market slogan may as well have been "Think different. Just like the rest of us.".
I'm sure it'll have some positive impact, but how much is still up for debate. Personally, I see more more opportunity for people who were stuck on the iPhone to now switch carriers from AT&T to Verizon (no change in iPhone user base), than people already on Verizon to be switching from an existing Android or Blackberry device to an iPhone.
I'll admit, as a former iPod Touch user that pretty much HAS to use Verizon (no other carrier has a signal where my house is), Apple once had a chance to get me on board. At this point though, I've already went with the Android alternative, and I've acclimated to it now. Just for kicks the other day I picked up my iPod Touch again and I was flat out amazed and just how much I disliked using it now. Everything on my Fascinate feels better. The apps, the features - Android simply works better for me at this point.
The iPhone's only use to me now is to serve as competition so as to ensure that Android software and hardware development doesn't stagnate.
They didn't say they'd be destroyed - just overtaken. The fanboys were always there. There was a period (early to mid 90's) when that's pretty much the ONLY business Apple had though, and the company quite nearly went under during that time.
I'd seriously question what "science and facts" you're referring to. As a matter of fact, I can say with experience that for anyone with seborraic dermatitus, if you don't wash your skin every day it will break out into a rash.
My skin is fine. Not taking a showing every day is disgusting. Really.
Nah, I'm not a coffee drinker, and the headache will fade right away within 15 minutes of taking a shower.
Sports equipment is a bit different. When you use it, you're often sweaty and smelly anyways, so a little extra stench isn't all that hard to tolerate. When I played football in high school I only washed my practice jersey and pants about once per week too.
Indeed. Also, though it might not be a health hazard per se, the general feeling of dirtiness does effect my well being. I realize that its' probably psychological/stress related, but for example if I wake up on a weekend and don't shower until noon for example (whereas normally I shower before work a few hours earlier than that), I will without fail be starting to develop a bad headache. Just the general bad feeling of being unclean will affect me.
Same with clothes. I'll admit that once or twice - particularly in college - I've been in a rush and just threw on a pair of jeans or socks that I wore the day before (never did exceed 2 wearings though). Without fail, I would be not feeling well by the end of the day. Again, probably stress related, but still.
Then you can sue them for breach of warranty.
I don't think Apple thought this cunning plan all the way through.
I'm sure that they have. As asinine as it may seem, I'm sure their warranty contract states that as part of regular service they are to implement any fixes or design changes. If you refuse those then you're not obeying the terms of the contract and therefore they are not required to either.
Lawyers get paid well for a reason.
Good ol' Lycos. That was actually my search engine of choice in the pre-Google days.
I don't remember it being THAT bad, but I think it may be a matter of adjustment. I DO remember that back then my bookmarks file meant a lot more to me. If I found something interesting I bookmarked it because otherwise I might not find it again. Nowadays - I rarely care about my bookmarks. Anything I need to find again I can usually find FASTER by Googling than by searching through a long list of bookmarks.
I guess that does speak some towards how much better search engines have gotten.
Very, very true. I tend to be politically pretty moderate myself, and due to interests I visit a lot of different sites with different political leanings. Even on the sites that are mostly right-wing, people are very unhappy about this. It's not the right way to go about it. It's not going to solve anything, and it causes problems for everyone.
As someone who works in local government, that's definitely spot on. When we have council meetings, we MIGHT have a few uniformed officers there if they have some interest in the meeting - the sheriff will likely be there too (he may or may not be armed), and the local building security, but they're not armed.
Interestingly enough though, as the shooting occurred on government property, concealed weapons permit holders were not legally allowed to bring their guns onto the property. More examples of how useless gun laws are. The people you have to worry about don't obey them anyways, and they only serve to hamper the law abiding citizens that you don't have to worry bout - and may have even been able to do something to stop this.
Simple reality is that local government meetings are fairly open events that are not that strict on security.
Hopefully she pulls through and we can as a nation rise up stronger from this tragedy.
I've tried the unaccelerated video playback on a myriad of configurations. Different distros - Slackware, Gentoo, Ubuntu, Arch, and others. Different CPU's - a 1.8Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo - a 2.5Ghz AMD Phenom quad core, an AMD Sempron 3400, a Celeron 2.8Ghz, and others. Multiple video cards from both AMD, Intel, and Nvidia as well. Not just swapping components either - I've tried completely different machines (such as my work machine).
Every, single, one, exhibited tearing of the video without GPU acceleration. Not always blatant - it's a subtle effect, and sometimes only visible in high motion scenes, but it was there.
Tried every trick in the book - disabling Compiz, enabling V-sync, different video rendering (OpenGL, X11, Xvideo, etc) - pretty much everything. NOTHING would make the tearing go away except GPU acceleration.
With the amount of testing I did on this specific issue, with multiple setups, I'm convinced that anyone who claims that it's "working fine" without GPU acceleration is simply just not as sensitive to the issue as I am.
All true, but I think the major point of your assertion, and the one that they always miss, is that EVERYONE doesn't have to break their DRM.
I think there is some assumption that if it takes an elaborate setup to break the DRM then it's OK, as not many people will bother, but the reality is once the DRM is broken, someone will release the content on P2P networks WITHOUT DRM. At that point, an easily copyable version is out in the wild. Game over.
That's what I don't get. They throw all this copyprotection on a Blu-ray, DVD, CD, downloadable file, etc, as if a pirates primary source for copying something is finding a friend with it and snagging their copy. In the 80's with VHS tapes that might have been the case, but today? If I want those files I don't even worry about what DRM is on them. I go to The Pirate Bay because, well, someone else has already done the heavy lifting on that stuff.
Which means that they should be shipping from Taiwan any day now.
Yes, but that doesn't have anything to do with learning, that has to do with AMD beating Intel to the market with a useful 64 bit instruction set (Itanic is a joke and will always be nothing more than a footnote) and Intel having no choice but to follow AMD's lead. It's an illustration of what happens when you rest on your laurels.
Depends on your viewpoint. I like AMD, and typically buy AMD, but realistically, it was moreso AMD that was resting on it's laurels. There is nothing really wrong with Itanium. It's a perfectly viable 64-bit instruction set. It's only major fallback was that well, it wasn't x86. Technical problems had little to do with it.
AMD basically shoe-horned 64-bit instructions into the x86 architecture. A far less creative and less impressive feat, but the reality is that market forces decide what succeeds and what doesn't - and the market didn't WANT creative or impressive. They wanted something that they could ease into without breaking backwards compatibility. Notice that just now are people really starting to move to Windows 64-bit in numbers - many years after the chips have been available.
That's a major dissappointment. It's been my experience that in Linux, you simply WILL NOT get smooth video that is free of tearing without employing one of the GPU-assisted rendering methods. Me personally I bought a recent (but still desktop oriented) Nvidia card for my Linux system just for VDPAU support. That was one of the main things that made Linux finally usable to me as a "daily driver".
Eh. Episode 1 was the bad one. Episode 2 wasn't terrible, and I think Episode 3 was actually decent.
Overall, the following tweaks would have done a LOT:
1. Make Anakin start older when first meeting Obi-wan. 14-15 years old.
2. Remove Jar-jar - completely.
3. Remove pod-racing.
4. Remove midichlorians.
5. Find a different actor to play Anakin.
6. Used puppet-Yoda for the first movie. CG Yoda wasn't bad in Eps 2 and 3 but I almost wanted to cry seeing him in Ep 1.
Truth be told after seeing his later stuff, despite the initial fan outcry about the possibility, I would have far preferred that Leonardo DiCaprio have gotten the role of Anakin than Hayden Christianson.
George is more heavily scrutinized on this issue because of past transgressions. There were at least 3 (probably more) VHS versions of the originals, then the laserdisc versions, then the DVD versions (sure there is more than one DVD set out for them), etc, etc, etc.
It's not that releasing on BluRay is a bad thing - it's just that based on past experiences, most people see this as the inevitable FIRST OF MANY BluRay releases of these movies.
Truth be told . . . my only copies of the original trilogy are still on VHS . . .
It's like how at movie theaters or fast food joints they don't always show individual item prices so you don't see that the 'combo' saves you nothing
Either saves you nothing, or at places like Taco Bell costs MORE than my normal order.
I typically always get the small drinks at a fast food place. They all have free refills anyways and I'm not likely to go back more than once for a refill - if that. Taco Bell combos all include their large drinks - which are much bigger than any amount of soda I'd actually want. If you order the combos piecemeal with the large drinks then it's a wash - but if you order separately and get the small drink instead of large, then you actually save a decent amount on the total.